


... yeah, that was my idea

by TheWhiteLily



Series: Season Four Premiere Flashfic [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s04e01 The Six Thatchers, Explains some things, F/M, Gen, Maybe John isn't such a douche as we thought, POV Sherlock Holmes, Spoilers, Yeah okay I guess it's angst, missing moment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 11:06:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9178807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWhiteLily/pseuds/TheWhiteLily
Summary: John and Sherlock talk things through before Sherlock goes to meet Mary.





	

“She’ll run, most likely,” he told John, after he’d shown him the memory key from the Thatcher bust.

John’s eyes had creased with hurt, and confusion. He hadn’t been expecting another lie from her, imagined that a woman who’d lived like Mary would find it easy to strip bare all at once, that she would even notice the masks she was still wearing.

“And that would be a mistake,” said Sherlock, “that will most likely get her killed. She loves you. Desperately. That’s _real_ , John. She’s not thinking rationally because she’s afraid. She’d do anything to protect you, and Rosie. She’ll run to try to draw attention away, and hope he’ll think she’s abandoned you to save her own skin. She knows if she puts herself out of my reach I’ll have to keep my focus on you, in case he tries to snatch you to force her hand. She’s near-killed me to protect you before; I won’t be able to stop her from leaving.”

John was staring out the window, his eyes fixed and unseeing. “Can you track her?”

“No,” said Sherlock honestly. “Certainly not without leaving you and Rosie unprotected. She’ll move fast, and she’ll change, utterly. Clothes, hair, possessions, it’ll all be new. She won’t keep anything. I might find her, one day, but unless she’s actively doing something I can identify her by, I probably won’t: we’ll be in her element, not mine.”

“There is one thing she wouldn’t ditch.”

John glanced significantly at the memory key and returned his gaze to outside.

Sherlock’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, clever.”

John tilted his head fractionally without looking, a tiny sideways shake of the head accompanied by a bitter twist of the lips.

“I have my moments,” he said.

“Then yes, if we’re lucky, I probably can track her. I’ll have to make her think we weren’t expecting it. You won’t be able to come, to try to talk her out of it. Not until we’ve let her run for a bit.”

John stared, jaw clenched, for nearly a minute longer. Then he turned to meet Sherlock’s eyes for the first time, his own filled with terrible apprehension.

“Sherlock,” he said. “Are you sure? Are you _sure_ she’d be safer in London with us, than on the run? This isn’t just about you wanting to see out the case, is it? She’s an expert, and you seem _certain_  this will be her move. You’ve stood in the same place, and made this same choice, or close to. Are you saying that it was the wrong one then?”

Sherlock considered it anew. Mary was good. Exceptional. But the man tracking her was her equal, and driven by an awful vengeance that would make him near-impossible to subdue.

Perhaps Mary would get the chance to kill Ajay before he did her. But would she take it? Eliminate him with enough speed and certainty that he wouldn’t take her with him?

 _Sentiment_. Mary’s weakness, which had left Sherlock alive.

From the glance Sherlock had taken at the contents of the memory key, she and Ajay had been colleagues for a long time. Friends. Unless she’d truly betrayed him—Sherlock wouldn’t know until he looked into her eyes, as he’d looked into the certainty in Ajay’s—she wouldn’t credit the depth of his vendetta.

Far more likely that she would hesitate and, without backup, end up in an unmarked grave somewhere, her absence unnoticed by those around her, and nothing to indicate to John that she would never return.

At least after Reichenbach, John hadn’t known that Sherlock was alive. At the time, Sherlock hadn’t considered the difference that would make. He’d come back to find the two years of staggering grief at his absence that had etched their way into John’s face, in the process of being made almost whole again, the turbulent emotions reversed and given ease expertly by the woman John had found to share his life in Sherlock’s absence.

But with Mary assumed alive but unable to be contacted, it would be different. John—ever-faithful John—would remain in London to watch over their child and wait for her to return, and he would be caught in indefinite limbo. Unable to move forward, waiting for a woman who might _never_ return, who might—for all they knew—be already long dead.

John would be too loyal to seek another partner; he would have no one. No one except Sherlock, who hardly had Mary’s delicate touch in dealing with such things. That, Sherlock had come to understand, mattered.  Not everything could be fixed with a shot of adrenaline.

John would certainly fall apart again, spectacularly. He was barely holding things together already, with the amount of sleep he was getting right now. As the sole provider for his daughter, and suffering the grief of Mary’s absence, sustained indefinitely by the hope of her return, there was no telling how far he would retreat into despair.

Sherlock wouldn’t know how to even _start_ to save him from himself.

Fortunately, Sherlock was unblinded by the sentiment to which Mary and John were both prey, and the logical course was clear.

“Yes, John,” said Sherlock. “I promise you, it’s better this way. I can protect you all. Together. In London.”

John blinked very quickly again for a moment or two before nodding.

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll do it your way then. Together.”


End file.
